In The Shadows
by Nutsaboutremus
Summary: She never knew what hit her, when or even how. All she knew was that she could not stop looking, watching, or glancing in his direction. READ N REVIEW


**IN THE SHADOWS**

_No sleep  
No sleep until I am done with finding the answer  
Won't stop  
Won't stop before I find a cure for this cancer  
Sometimes  
I feel I going down and so disconnected  
Somehow  
I know that I am haunted to be wanted_

_I've been watching  
I've been waiting  
In the shadows all my time  
I've been searching  
I've been living  
For tomorrows all my life_

_In the shadows_

_In the shadows_

_They say  
That i must learn to kill before i can feel safe  
But I  
I rather kill myself then turn into their slave  
Sometimes  
I feel that I should go and play with the thunder  
Somehow  
I just don't wanna stay and wait for a wonder_

_I've been watching  
I've been waiting  
In the shadows all my time  
I've been searching  
I've been living  
For tomorrows all my life_

_Lately I been walking walking in circles, watching waiting for something  
Feel me touch me heal me, come take me higher_

_I've been watching  
I've been waiting  
In the shadows all my time  
I've been searching  
I've been living  
For tomorrows all my life  
I've been watching  
I've been waiting  
I've been searching  
I've been living for tomorrows_

_In the shadows_

_In the shadows  
I've been waiting_

_- Ramsus_

* * *

She never knew what hit her, when or even how. All she knew was that she could not stop looking, watching, or glancing in his direction.

It was what kept her alive, gave her existence a purpose even when her brother lambasted her for wandering around the castle at night, or when Harry tried to ask her out because Hermione and Ron were concerned about her mental welfare or even when Snape threw away her potion for she had not managed to do it up to standard at _all_.

When nothing went right in her life, day or week, all she had to do was glance at him across the hall, or as they passed each other in the hallways. Her pulse tripped just seeing him.

She loved to steal glances over at the Slytherin table, watching him eat and talk with his friends, an arrogant smirk painted on his lips, so above everyone else.

Even when they stood at the beginning of the term to sing the school song, she remembered him remaining silent, hands in his pockets, standing in a way that exuded masculine elegance well beyond his age.

For he had filled out, thanks to quidditch and his endless hours at the pitch. Almost as tall as Ron, his shoulders broad and strapping, lithe athletic built, his enhanced physique leading to a splendid sight as he whizzed by on his Dragonbolt.

Never mind that he rarely caught the snitch like Harry did, the way he moved was good enough for her. Smooth elegance all at once.

Then that customary flash of furious envy when she saw him being overly friendly with Pansy or any other girl for that matter. It gnawed at her that he might entangled in a romantic relationship with some female member of the Hogwarts student population, a secret one since he showed no signs of such in public.

But even that could not stop her from looking forward to potions class on Mondays and Thursdays for he had potions right after and the narrow corridor in the dungeons meant having to brush by him and take a deep whiff of his alluring masculine scent. She wished she could bottle it – it was rain, soap, magic and something so earthily unique – so different from her brother's or even Harry's.

Her eyes roving over him, longing and filled with sweet tender pining as he sat or stood in his own world, removed from everything around him, barely even noticing her.

That was what tore at her the most. The fact that he did not look at her, not even once. She would not have minded merciless bullying even but none, she was ignored and invisible to him.

Yes, once or twice, quite by accident their eyes had met and the thrill that had shot through her had been so immense, she had to sit on a step to regain her composure – but it was nothing more than a chance glance. She was sure.

How she wished for him to look at her, with desire dancing in those ocean grey eyes. How much she wanted the those eyes to flash silver at her sight, the way it did when he was passionate about something – a rarity that she had witnessed – when Ron and Harry had pushed him too far by emphasizing the fact that his father was still in Azkaban.

He looked so angry, she fell for him even more. That there was a fire burning beneath that icy façade did it for her.

From that day onwards, he was no longer like a Viking God or a Nordic Prince to her, but more like heat burning stronger that the brightest flame. She wondered if she would explode if she touched him. Her breath quickened at the thought of even touching him.

But that would never happen, he would never acknowledge her existence so she watched him, from the shadows of the castle. Darkness had become her best friend of late.

At nights, as she sat in the empty common room by herself, darkness swirling around her comfortably, the embers of the fire dying, she thought of him.

His wheat blonde hair, smooth, and possibly silky to touch, hanging over his broad forehead, sharp, chiselled cheekbones lend a aristocratic touch to his face.

But it was his lips that she could not think of without thinking of kissing them – clear cut and sensuous lips.

And the angular, square jaw she thought of raining soft kisses on. It was usually in this vein of thought that she fell asleep – her dreams predictably along the same lines.

Causing her to wake up flushed to the stark reality that he could never be hers, the gaping chasm in her heart widening inch by inch.

Hell, she was not even supposed to like him. She had been raised to despise people like him – snobbish, prideful, egoistical thugs who flaunted their money and power around, and not caring about right or wrong.

She had been taught to hate his kind and stay well away from them – deatheater material was what her father always called them.

But she did not care to remember or bother. She was done for. She was obsessed with him and that was her dirty, dark secret, one she carried like a black flame within herself, a relieving burden that gave her reason to live and move on.

Even as her whole world fell apart, from neglect from friends and over protectiveness on her brother's part, Even as she receded further and further into her own shell of darkness, not even gaining pleasures from reading or writing as she used to, even when being alone, sitting in the pitch black dark gave her comfort and peace like nothing else, even then, at her lowest point, at rock bottom, she thought of him, eating mashed potatoes which he secretly loved or absorbedly reading a book in the library when it was nearly empty so no one would know that he liked to read.

For she had realised when one watched someone as closely as she watched him, they were bound to discover certain things about the person that no one else knew about, facts once uncovered you wondered why you had not noticed earlier for it was so glaringly obvious.

Like the fact that he was particularly merciless in his teasing or bullying every time he happened to receive owl post during breakfast – a letter from her father she assumed intelligently.

It was on those mornings when he abandoned his breakfast and left the Grand Hall abruptly. Some mornings he did not even turn up – him and his group of friends – the two thugs Crabbe and Goyle, and Blaise, the soft-spoken, handsome Slytherin he had recently taken to.

But she would wait hopefully, glancing in that specific direction, every few minutes but he did not turn up.

Nothing could beat the rush of blood to the head she got every time she saw him unexpectedly; walking down the hallway like he owned every stone he set foot on.

It was that very presumptuous air that she was attracted to – his arrogance was a well-oiled and well-used shield to protect and conceal his deepest insecurities.

His hands, though, were her very undoing. She absolutely lost it when he ran them through his silky, seemingly soft wheat blonde hair – long slender tapering fingers, hard emerging knuckles and soft supple palms – epitome of elegance, all in his hands.

She wanted him with an intensity that burned from her very gut, a primal desire – so unlike the superficial infatuation she had had for Harry.

Then one day it happened.

She would recollect it as an entirely out of body experience – the surrealness that accompanies getting something you have wanted for the longest time of your life.

It was on the night of the eve of Halloween and she was in the library standing beside a shelve looking for a book, all-alone as everyone else celebrated in their common rooms or at Hogsmead.

That was when she looked up and saw him. Walking in a thoroughly casual and languid manner, his robes swishing about him majestically. He seemed to be heading in her direction but that was impossible, really out of question.

She kept her head down, the words in the pages swimming before her very eyes, as his scent filled the entire space around, suffocating her. If she died at that moment, it would be a happy death – which she was sure of.

"Why?" One word. That was all he said, his cold voice cracking the still silence.

Her head jerked up and she lost all sense from the very look in his eyes, as he gazed down at her. She knew what he was talking about, but did not want to think so at first.

He did not know what he was doing or saying. All he could think of was that at the top of her shoulder was a little dent, scalloped in the bone or suspended between tow bones with a fuzz of shadow along its rim.

His tongue wanted very much to trace the oval of this rim and push into the hollow. His excitement was close to pain and sharpened by the pressure of contradictions: she hated him yet watched him, he loathed her yet he wanted her.

For all his hesitation, he had prepared nothing to say. His only thought was that she looked even more beautiful than his fantasies of her. Her small sensual mouth was held tight in anxiety and nervousness.

They stared at each other for several seconds after he spoke, the darkness of the library wafting around them, the only light from the hallway and the moonlight filtering though.

"I don't know."

"You do."

"No, _really_."

He could gauge nothing by these terse replies and he was still unable to see her expression clearly.

She moved beyond the moonlight, down past the shelves. He stepped further into the library, unwilling to let her out of close range.

She was moving further away, towards the corner, into the deeper shadow. He took another couple of steps in her direction.

Still she shrank away. One elbow was resting on the shelves and she seemed to slide along them, as though about to disappear between the books.

It was only then it occurred to him that she might not shrinking from him but drawing him with her deeper into the gloom.

From the moment, he spoke to her, he had nothing to lose. So he walked towards her slowly as she slipped back, until she was in the corner where she stopped and watched him approach, fixing him with her misty brown eyes.

He too stopped, less than four feet away. He was close enough now, and there was just enough light to see that she was tearful and trying to speak. She turned aside and made a steeple of her hands to enclose her mouth and noise, pressing her fingers into the corner of her mouth.

She brought herself under control before, "It's been there for months.." Her throat constricted and she had to pause.

She drew a deep breath, then continued more reflectively, "It's been there for years maybe, eating away at me. I used so many things not to think about it.."

"It?" He said, having an idea what she meant but pushing it away.

Until now her gaze had been lowered. When she spoke again, he saw the glimmer of the tears in her eyes.

"You knew didn't you? Something had happened between us. It's like being close to something so large you don't even see it. Even now..I'm not sure I can. I know it's there 'cos it made me behave ridiculously."

She started, seized with an unpleasant thought that pieced the nexus of her soul.

"You _do_ know what I'm talking about…" She was afraid that her assumptions about him coming to her tonight were wrong and he would think she was a fool and use this against her.

He moved nearer. "I do, I know exactly. But why are you crying? Is there someone else?"

He thought she was about to broach the obstacle of there being _someone else_. She did not understand and did not know how to answer – how could she begin to tell him when so much and so many emotions engulfed her.

They stared at each other in confusion, unable to speak. For a moment there seemed no way out with words.

He put his hand on her shoulders and her bare skin was cool to the touch.

And she knew that she was right. _She _burned when he touched her but it was the sort of burning she wanted to last for a long time.

She would not mind bursting into flame as long as it was from touching him, for she was sure this was only the beginning – like a phoenix she would rise from the ashes, having been burnt to a metaphoric death by his kisses and touch.

Her mouth tasted of caramel and salt, reminding him of summer days by the beach with caramel lollipops as an innocent child. They drew away for a second before kissing again with greater confidence.

Daringly, they touched the tips of their tongues.

That was when she made the falling, sighing sound, which marked a transformation. Until that moment, there was still something ludicrous about having a despised face so close to one's own.

But the contact of their tongues, alive and slippery muscle, moist flesh on flesh and the strange sound it drew from her, changed it all. This sound seemed to enter him, pierce him down his length so he was able to step out of himself and kiss her.

Now it was about drowning, burning – impersonal and abstract.

The sighing sound she made was greedy and he was greedy too. He pushed her hard into the corner between the books.

As they kissed, she was pulling at his clothes, plucking ineffectually at his robes, shirt, his waistband. Kissing became gnawing – she bit him on the cheek not quite playfully.

He pulled away and then moved back and she bit him hard on the lower lip. He kissed her throat, forcing her head against the shelves; she pulled his hair and pushed his face down between her breasts.

He found her nipple, tiny and hard and put his mouth around it. Her spine went rigid and juddered along her length.

Her arms were looped around his neck and when she tightened her grip, he rose through it, desperate to breathe, up to his full height, crushing her head against his chest. She bit him gain and pulled at his shirt.

They did not hear the button ping against the floorboards. She traced his nipple with her teeth. The sensation was unbearable. He titled her face up, and trapping her against his ribs, kissed her eyes and parted her lips with is tongue.

At last they were strangers, their pasts were forgotten. They were also strangers to themselves who had forgotten who or where they were, something both of them equally desired.

The library door was thick and none of the ordinary sounds that might have reminded them, might have held them back could reach them. They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future.

They was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slide across each other in this restless, sensual wrestling.

She was licking his ear, biting his ear lobe. Cumulatively, these bites aroused him and enraged him, goaded him. Under her robes, he felt for her buttocks and squeezed hard.

Without speaking he guided her onto the lowest shelve. When he lifted the clinging, silky dress again he thought her look of uncertainty mirrored his own but there was only one inevitable end and there nothing they could do but go towards it.

They did not make love. They _made fire_. Instead of ecstatic frenzy, there was an explosive stillness. They moved closer, deeper into each other and for seconds on end, everything stopped.

They were face to face in the gloom, staring into what little they could see of each other's eyes and now it was no longer abstract. There was nothing impersonal about a face.

The son of Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, the daughter of Arthur and Molly Weasley, enemies since childhood, raised to hate each other, confronted the change they had achieved.

He stared at the girl he had always known, overwhelmed by the beauty in a face, which a lifetime's habit had taught him to ignore. He whispered her name with deliberation of a child trying out distinct sounds.

The sound of his voice, as the shelves creaked with their movement, inviting her, murmuring into her ear.

They would jump together, in this mountain summit she stood on, as she climaxed. He was with her now, peering into an abyss and hand in hand they would fall backwards.

He did not ask her out to Hogsmead or for a romantic walk along the lake like every other typical Hogwarts couple. There would be another time for that, both of them knew it.

There would be more contradictions - hilarity and sensuousness, desire and fear at their recklessness, awe and impatience to begin. They would wrap themselves in the satin darkness and begin again. This was no fantasy, this was real, this was their near future, both desirable and unavoidable.

**_FIN_**

* * *


End file.
